Cheers and applause erupted Monday night as neighbors gathered around a dog that had been stolen over the weekend in San Pedro and then mysteriously returned.

“Here he is!” someone yelled as Mike Pesic and Tracy Antonovich drove up at about 8:30p.m. with their 11-week-old bull mastiff puppy, Bubba.

The couple had just moved into their new home in the 1100 block of South Patton Avenue this weekend when their puppy managed to escape their backyard while they were gone.

A stationary surveillance video recorder on the home of their neighbors across the street showed a woman in a gray Toyota FJ Cruiser stop and coax the dog toward her, putting him in her car and driving away.

The homecoming culminated three days of intense door-to-door searches, Internet pleas and posting fliers all over town. They also filed a police report.

Earlier on Monday, an anonymous woman called to say she had the dog and would drop him off at the couple’s home at 5:30p.m.

But when the woman hadn’t shown up by 7:30p.m., the couple gave up, figuring it was either a hoax call or the person got cold feet.

The dog, it turned out, had been dropped off at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Division station, where the couple went to pick him up.

No questions were asked of the woman, Antonovich said, although they didn’t believe she was the one who initially stole the animal.

“Whatever, he’s home and I don’t care,” Antonovich said. “She had a bag of dog food which she gave me, then she gave me the dog and walked out.”

As television cameras pressed in, the couple held Bubba and thanked their friends for pitching in to find the pooch.

“It’s been unbelievable, all the friends who helped us,” said Pesic, a 34-year-old longshoreman.

The couple, along with dozens of friends and family, fanned out all over town in search of the dog and an FJ Cruiser matching the one seen in the video.

Among the first things he’ll do, Pesic said, is fortify the gate to their backyard.

Pesic and his father had worked to secure the fence before the couple moved in, and left the dog for less than two hours Saturday morning to run some errands.

When they returned, he was gone, probably managing to scoot underneath the fence despite bricks and a trash can put there as an added barrier.

The dognapping caper caught the attention of the media because of the videotaped evidence. The couple spent their time Monday juggling interviews while family members helped to continue the process of settling into their new home.

The dog was wearing a red collar and large ID tag when he was last seen. But the collar was gone when he was returned.

“I was in a complete panic,” Pesic said of finding his dog missing at around noon Saturday.

He said he’d gone out to buy some paint and open a new account at a local bank.

Later in the day, the couple remembered a neighbor from across the street who had told them she had a video surveillance camera on her property.

Friends and relatives swarmed into the neighborhood by Sunday, painting pink “Missing Puppy” messages on their rear windshields and posting fliers. They visited all of the area’s veterinarians, pet stores and the animal shelter, and posted numerous pleas for help on Facebook and Craigslist.

“This is San Pedro,” said Pesic’s cousin Bridget Smith, a fifth-grade teacher at Crestwood Elementary School. “It’s too much of a community for someone not to know something.”

The woman who called told them she lived in San Pedro but worked in L.A. She had found the dog Saturday but didn’t have time to return him, she told the couple, and realized they were looking for the dog when she saw a Daily Breeze article online.

The response to their loss, Pesic said, has been “awesome.”

“My friends, my girlfriend’s friends, everyone just went ballistic when I wouldn’t have known where to start,” he said. “Everybody’s just pulled together.”

Pesic had wanted a bull mastiff dog since he was a boy, he said.

“He would follow me everywhere,” Pesic said of the dog he purchased from a breeder in September. “When he (first) came home, I promised I wouldn’t let him on the bed, but now he’s sleeping on the bed.”

The 25-pound puppy appeared to be in good health, if a bit overwhelmed by all the attention.

And he’ll no doubt get some royal treatment for the next couple days.

“He’s my first dog,” Pesic said. “I just want to watch him grow up and get big.”

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